Family Ties Warm Widow's Frozen Heart

January 16, 1998|By ROD DREHER Film Writer

The Winter Guest opens with a strong-willed old woman in a fur coat tramping purposefully across a barren, frozen landscape, her handbag and stubborn visage her weapons against the chill. Her name is Elspeth, and she's come into this Scottish seaside town on the coldest day of the year to rescue Frances, her widowed daughter, frozen by grief.

This remarkable film, directed by actor Alan Rickman, is a wise, and at times deeply moving inquiry into the problem of mortality. The Winter Guest observes that we mortals approach life's inevitable waxing and waning with fear and trembling, and counsels that only the love and companionship of family and friends will suffice to get us through. This is a profoundly life-affirming film.

If the actresses playing mother and daughter _ Phyllida Law and Oscar-winner Emma Thompson _ look eerily alike, it's because they truly are mother and daughter. It's not surprising, then, that their exchanges disclose a touching naturalness and nuance that makes the story seem that much more realistic. Frances, a photographer, has retreated from her teen-age son, Alex (Gary Hollywood), and has begun shooting only lifeless objects. Elspeth, a tough old Scottish bird, struggles to hector her distraught daughter back to life and to show her that her pain can't be escaped, only borne bravely with the help of those who love her.

Theirs is one of a quartet of stories here. We also see nervous Alex on the verge of discovering love and sex for the first time with a forward schoolmate, Nita (Arlene Cockburn). Two small boys (Douglas Murphy and Sean Biggerstaff) skip school to play by the frozen sea, and we see in them the rough-and-tumble comforts of childhood friendship as a bulwark against life's frightful mysteries. And, in a sweetly comic side plot, two dignified elderly ladies (Sheila Reid and Sandra Voe) mark their final days by accompanying each other to funerals.

The Winter Guest observes its characters on the cusp of changing seasons in life and shows with subtlety and humanity how only the love of others helps us endure fear, loss and the inexorable approach of death. It takes time to work its magic, but patience has its rewards: So very much in this screenplay _ which started out as a stage play by Sharman Macdonald, who worked with Rickman on this film adaptation _ resonates deeply and sonorously with the human experience.

An abridged version of this review was published when it was screened at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.